Straight from the horse's mouth

I'm back!!! Thankfully my bleeding has stopped, so the MFM doctors have lifted my orders for strict bed rest. You know what that means? I get to get up to go to the bathroom, and I even got to take a shower this morning. It was so great to actually stand up, my butt was seriously hurting so bad. I'm not sure the last time I have felt this refreshed, it feels awesome!

Since my mom has posted last, we have only really had one scare. Monday night I started having contractions again and the baby's heart rate started increasing. It got up to about 170 bpm, when his usually falls between 145-150. The doctors said they were going to just watch it, hoping that it went down when the contractions stopped. I ended up falling asleep, but they had to wake me up on two different occasions to make me change my sleeping position because his heart rate was all over the place. Once again they flooded me with fluids, and everything eventually went back to normal. It wasn't really a big deal, but had the possibility of being a problem. The MFM doctor later told me that contractions put pressure on the chord, thus slowing down blood flow to the baby. They just wanted to put me in the best position possible, to let blood flow through the chord as easy as possible.

Due to the fact that I've been here for a week-and-a-half I have become pretty close to the nurses here. One advantage to this is that they fill me in on the doctor's game plans. Yesterday one told me that the doctors are talking about using a catheter-type of balloon to go in and fill my cervix to prevent fluid from coming out. As the baby pees, the fluid will fill up and he will be one happy baby drinking and swimming around. The problem with this is that the pressure that is put on my cervix will most likely cause me to dilate and go into labor. Right now it is just way too risky to try, but they might try it later on around 27 or 28 weeks. This is just coming from one of my nurses though, and is not any sort of definite plan.

This little one is still up to all his old tricks. He is finally letting the nurses trace his heart rate for extended periods of time, but he doesn't always make it easy. Twice now he has kicked the monitor as soon as the nurses place it on my belly. We all get a kick out of it because it shows us how ornery he is. He hiccups at least once a day (for about 20 mins), which just lights up my face. He actually has them right now!

Alright so I just had to put the computer up to get my IV switched (they like to take mine out and put a new one in every few days to prevent infection). Six tries and one new IV later, I'm hooked back up. Thats right, I have really crappy veins, and it took three nurses to try to find a vein that would work. Ouuuuuuuuch.

Tomorrow I get another ultrasound- pray for fluid!!!! I'm going to go rest my arms now because they are a little sore from all the poking.